‘Casting without the ‘Pod

In technological terms, “podcast” is a pretty bad name.

Why? Because podcasts became popular right around the same time as the iPod taking over the world. That relative plethora of pods leads many people to believe that podcasts and the iPod are tied together somehow, and that they need to own one in order to listen to the other. I find this confusion even among some computer-literate people, so don’t feel too bad, okay?

Just to save time, I’ve created a little mnemonic trick to help you remember that that’s not the case. Here it is: YOU DON’T NEED AN IPOD TO LISTEN TO PODCASTS. Okay, that’s not really a fun mnemonic on the order of Roy G. Biv (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet: the colors of white light when it’s broken apart as in a rainbow) or “She made Harry eat onions” (the Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario). Still, it’s just as true, and just so you don’t forget, I’ll run it past you one more time: YOU DON’T NEED AN IPOD TO LISTEN TO PODCASTS. Read more

Danny Federici died this week

One of my favorite albums of all time is Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle.” His first album–the one that would later produce a string of hits for Manfred Mann–hadn’t sold so well, and the band was reduced to making its next record in a way-off-the-beaten-path studio with a creaky piano.

It’s hard to describe, but the album has a…a sound. Springsteen was 24 when he made it, and it’s one of those rare recordings, kind of like the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul,” in which you can tell that the artist really hasn’t made up his mind what he’s going to end up sounding like yet.
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It doesn’t count if you don’t fall down

I went out yesterday and bought myself a pair of ice skates. I haven’t owned my own skates since I was a child, although my friends and I spent about three years of our high school existence hitting the Oak Lawn Ice Arena every Friday night.

As an aside, this was actually much cooler than it sounds. Friday nights at the ice rink meant they turned out all the lights except for some colored mood lights mounted on the side walls. Then they planted a couple of rather massive speakers directly on the ice, and for several hours a DJ would blast loud rock and roll throughout the building. The place was filled with women who, granted, were usually dressed in outerwear, but many were cute and even if the cute ones didn’t show up it was fun to slam your friends into the side panels while Jimi Hendrix roared in the foreground.

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Goodbye Johnny Frigo

I read that Johnny Frigo died this week. He was 90 years old, so I guess it wasn’t unexpected. Don’t worry if you don’t know who he was. I didn’t either, until he showed up to perform for us a couple of years ago in one of my live sound classes at Columbia College.

Johnny played a number of instruments. He was a first-call bass player in Chicago during the ’60s and ’70s. He eventually hung that up because he didn’t feel he could compete with the youngsters anymore. At that time, he returned to his first instrument, the violin, and basically made a whole new name for himself at an age when many of his peers were moving into retirement homes.

When he visited my class, he told a story about performing in a dance hall when he was just a teenager. At that time, he was playing upright bass, and he would carry this giant instrument on the bus to the club where he was working on the north side. If he played well, patrons would tip him by throwing coins in the f-holes of the bass. When he got home, his brothers would help him shake the bass to get the coins out.

One night, someone inserted a bill in the f-hole. Johnny didn’t remember if it was a five or a ten, but either way it was a lot of money for a teenager back in the ’20s. He told us that he and his brothers had a terrible time trying to get the bill to fall out. The next night, when he went back to the club, he told the owner about how someone had given him such a big tip. The owner replied, “Yeah. That was Al Capone!”

Johnny played with just about everyone from his era, including the Dorseys and Chico Marx and Frank Sinatra. When he died, he still had gigs scheduled.